SustainableBusiness.com Newswire

02/01/2010 11:50 AM ET   
News from: Empowerment Institute

America Goes on Low Carbon Diet

Tens of thousands of US households join local Cool Community campaigns to cut carbon emissions by 25%

As glaciers melt and sea levels rise, world governments remain in gridlock over global warming. Renewable energy and new technologies will take decades longer to scale up than scientists say we have, but for social entrepreneur David Gershon the immediate solution for cutting the country's goliath footprint is simple. Start at home.

"The United States is responsible for 20% of total global emissions, and approximately 50% of America's carbon footprint is residential," says David Gerson, founder and CEO of the Empowerment Institute and author of Social Change 2.0. 

"At the community level, our residential carbon emissions are up to 90%. If, as U.S. households, we were able to reduce our carbon footprint by 25% and take this to scale community- and nationwide, we could significantly lower America's carbon emissions in the short run and buy us the critically needed time for the longer-term solutions to scale up." 

Inspired by Gershon's 2006 book, Low Carbon Diet: A 30-Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds, carbon-conscious communities across the country have stopped waiting on Washington and are taking direct action at the local level.

Tens of thousands of American households in hundreds of cities and towns from coast to coast are joining Cool Community campaigns and voluntarily trimming tons off of their carbon footprint.

Early results from the campaign's pilot programs are off the charts. Households using David Gershon's step-by-step low-carbon diet plan have cut their emissions up to 35% in a matter of months.

Cool Portland, the campaign's first pilot program, more than doubled its goal of cutting carbon emissions by 10% per household, realizing an average reduction of 22%, or 6,700 pounds. Citizen-led EcoTeams, peer-support groups of 5 to 8 households, in Vermont similarly reduced their carbon footprint by 23%.

Davis, California, which set a goal of cutting carbon emissions 80% by 2050, reported an average reduction of 5,516 pounds per participating household in its Low Carbon Diet Challenge. The city is preparing to scale up a 3-year Cool Davis campaign to include 75% of its households.

Rochester, New York resident Bob Siegel inspired local mayors to launch a Low Carbon Diet Challenge. The 120 participating households achieved an average reduction of 10,828 pounds each. As a result, citizen organizers and city officials set a new goal of scaling up a Cool Rochester campaign to engage 80,000 households and reducing their community's carbon footprint by one billion pounds. 

The Cool Mass campaign is taking the program to scale statewide. The pilot, led by the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, initially involved 1,000 households that achieved an average household carbon reduction of 25%. The Cool Mass campaign has since set the nation's most ambitious carbon reduction goal, 25-25-2012: 25% of households reducing their carbon footprint 25% by 2012, followed by 50% of households by 2015, and 75% by 2020. The first communities to sign on are Boston, Braintree, Brookline, Dedham, Hingham, Hull, Milton, Newton, and Winchester which represent almost a million of the state's residents.

Even major corporations such as Nike have tapped Gershon to mobilize employees to participate in Low Carbon Diet EcoTeams and then encourage their communities to do the same as part of a companion Cool Corporate Citizen initiative.

Gershon is also in discussions with ICLEI USA, Local Governments for Sustainability, about an alliance to launch Cool Community campaigns with their membership of over 600 cities, towns and counties representing 32% of the U.S. population.

Bold, large-scale social change initiatives are not new to David, he literally ran onto the world stage in 1986 when he organized the First Earth Run. An 86-day global torch relay for peace at the height of the cold war that engaged the participation of tens of millions of people in 62 countries, including heads of state, and was witnessed by over a billion more worldwide.

To date his Empowerment Institute has given its free Cool Community tele-training to 650 people representing over three hundred cities and towns from 36 states and countries including Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan.

To help start more Cool Community campaigns, Gershon has launched a six-part series on the Huffington Post titled "Empowering a Climate Change Movement: Low Carbon Diet and the Cool Community." The series will be excerpted from Chapter 11 of his new book Social Change 2.0. He will also offer free a Cool Community webinar on March 11, 2010.

Interested individuals and communities are invited to enroll at EmpowermentInstitute.net/lcd.

For more information please contact:

Paul West
(541) 359 1886
media@socialchange2.com